Remord
by sapphireswimming
Summary: [A oneshot collection] There are so many things to remember, small moments that he had completely forgotten until he picked up his pen.
1. Chapter 1: Brushed

**I've started rereading the Hobbit for the first time after seeing the movies and now little details keep popping out at me that need to be written, even if it's just in short snippets.**

**So this collection comes out of the book verse with movie characters in mind. Sporadic installments will come whenever I'm able to sit down and write out one of the fourteen ideas that have come out of the first twenty two pages? And whatever comes after that, haha.**

**Should be amusing for me and good for you, even if it is, alas, profitable to no one.**

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**Remord**

_~ n., a touch of remorse; v., to remember with regret ~_

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Chapter 1: Brushed

_"By some curious chance one morning long ago in the quiet of the world, when there was less noise and more green, and the hobbits were still numerous and prosperous, and Bilbo Baggins was standing at his door after breakfast smoking an enormous long wooden pipe that reached nearly down to his woolly toes (neatly brushed)- Gandalf came by." - page five_

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The thing about hobbits' feet is that, while they are sturdy and covered with thick leathery soles that need no other covering when traversing the wild— or the footpaths that trail over hill and through wood in the Shire, as the case may be— they are not immune to the conditions through which they must march.

Pleasant days are fine enough, when one can take a leisurely pace through the long green grass with walking stick in hand, and turn around when one is done and ready to return to the warmth and comfort of home.

But after a day with determined dwarves, even the most prone-to-wandering hobbits would find themselves a bit out of their league— poor Mr. Baggins included— unable to keep up the stiff pace if not aided by the riding of a pony, the mounting of which was a most terrifying moment for the middle aged hobbit who had, of course, _known_ about ponies, and horses even, and had seen the creatures that moved carts to and from the market square, but had never in his life expected to be atop one.

Even with the protection of one's feet being raised off the ground for most of the traveling, however, there is still the mounting and dismounting and making camp and searching for mushrooms among the trees to bolster the largely unimaginative cooking the dwarves seemed to favor while on the road, even if they were more than happy to eat him out of every savory pastry and seasoned dish he had in his pantries.

His feet were filthy just a few days into their journey. Bilbo tried to ignore the ever present coating of dust and the dirt that now caked his nails, he really did, but while he loved to walk around the gardens of his home until the dirt eased between his toes, he didn't fancy doing the same out of necessity, and without a nice warm bath to return to at night.

Hobbits loved the loamy earth, the rich dark dirt from which they coaxed the most exquisite flowers, but they also, to a soul, ran steaming baths at the end of the day to wash the lingering traces of dust from them until they were clean as a whistle and unafraid to patter through their lovely homes without trailing dirty footprints across their tidy floors.

Bilbo had no homes to think of dirtying on his journey, but he still despised the feeling of going to bed with dirty feet, feeling bits of dirt flake off against his blanket as he tried to find a comfortable position against an unyielding tree root. He missed feeling clean, let alone having baths every day.

The dwarves didn't seem to know what bathing was. They'd passed several streams that Bilbo would have made do with in an instant even if it meant being cold and not having a towel to wipe one's feet with or a bathing robe to wrap oneself with upon completion, but the company rode past them without anything more than a cursory glance or a call to fill their water bottles as quickly as they were able so that they could keep moving.

It wasn't until the first rain that Bilbo became truly miserable upon this point. He had suffered in silence, lamenting the loss of his bright copper tub along with his handkerchiefs and consistent meals and soft pillow but the mud was another thing entirely.

The mud splashed up against his feet and the bottoms of his trouser legs even when riding, caking his feet even before they dismounted for the night and his toes sunk down into the ground and made a horrid squelching noise every time he took a step closer to the fire that marked the middle of their miserable camping grounds.

At least the rain had stopped before the cooking pots came out (for if there was one thing worse than a bland stew, it was a bland stew that had been watered down by the rain), but that did not mean the ground would be dry for many hours to come, or that the trees would stop dripping collected rainwater upon their heads as they tried to sleep on the slippery ground.

Bilbo spent a restless night, vainly trying to keep as much of his blanket dry and free of mud as possible, tossing and turning because water droplets kept falling in his eyes every time he thought he had found a comfortable position.

Night passes whether you've slept through it or not, however, and with the dawn came the rousing of the dwarves and setting out again on the next day's journey.

The poor burglar was in a somber mood as they packed up camp and rode away. While the dwarves knew how to take a rainy night outdoors better than a sheltered hobbit did, they too disliked sleeping in mud. And so it was that most of the company was hard mouthed and quiet, too irritated (or perhaps just tired) to sing much as they rode.

No one complained when Thorin called for a stop next to a stream that curved out of the trees and into the sunlight.

Bilbo dismounted quickly and chose a flat rock downstream from the dwarves who were drinking their fill of the clean, cool water, and he dipped his toes into the current, sighing contentedly as the dried mud softened and fell away, disappearing into the water.

Kicking his feet around for a few more seconds, he hoped that the mud had completely washed off before he drew them up to himself on the rock and set about seeing to them himself. Sure enough, the mud had gone, but left behind it a mess of hair that was more knotted than curly. Bilbo _hmm_ed to himself and, lacking any comb fit for the job, ran his fingers loosely through the hair, trying to detangle it as much as possible.

He had made little progress before the company was called back to their mounts. Sighing, Bilbo resigned himself to the rest of the day's journey with half tangled foot hair, but kept reaching down to play with it, loosening more knots while there was nothing else to be done for the afternoon.

Reaching for one's feet while riding is not the soundest of ideas, however, as Bilbo soon learned. He'd grown almost comfortable riding Myrtle, relinquishing his death grip on the reins the week before, but moving legs and reaching down one side or the other threatened his sense of balance more than once over the course of the day.

When he nearly fell off his pony, Kili, who was the dwarf that happened to be riding next to him that day, looked over in concern, inquiring into the health of their burglar.

Bilbo replied that it was nothing, even as his fingers itched to reach down again to deal with a particularly stubborn clump of hair.

Kili was watching for him this time, and the hand that snagged his jacket was probably all that saved him from toppling over. After such a close call, Kili refused to be put off and demanded to know what had gotten into the hobbit.

Bilbo believed it only fair to give an explanation and so detailed the process of combing out one's foot hair when one has left home without a comb and let the mud knot every lock and curl of hair that was available to be knotted.

Kili stared wide eyed at Bilbo, then his furry feet, then back up to his face. He blinked a few more times, then dug a heel into his own pony to urge it forward where he was soon lost in conversation with his brother.

Bilbo hunched in his saddle, despondently reaching down one more time to brush his fingertips against his woolly toes before giving it up in favor of watching the never changing scenery ride past. And thinking, not for the first time, how these dwarves must despise his tagging along with their company of warriors and serious strategists. Here he was, a hobbit far from home, complaining to the sister-son of the King Under the Mountain about the care of his feet. It wasn't enough to pine after the safety and security of his home, but lack of toiletries, which he must have known would be an issue when he ran out of Bag End with next to nothing in his satchel, was something that no one else had complained of on this journey and he silently berated himself until Kili finally fell back again to travel at his side.

It took him a moment to register that the dwarf was holding something in his outstretched hand, pushing it toward Bilbo while the hobbit stared uncomprehendingly. His hand finally reached out and wrapped around a small prickly object and, as he turned it over in his hand, he realized that he was looking at a rough comb, carved out of stone or bone but completely serviceable despite looking rather foreign to his sense of style. This would not come from a set of combs one could order up at Bywater. This was dwarven made, hewn out of necessity when a wanderer's life meant that any coins that still lined one's pockets went towards food and supplies and not to supplement one's store of frivolous niceties.

He looked up, glancing at the backs of the braided heads of the company and felt something welling up in his heart and spreading throughout his cold and tired body until it glowed with fondness and contentment.

Bilbo didn't ask whose generosity he had benefited from, who had sacrificed their own meager collection of personal belongings to help the misfit burglar who had yet to prove his worth. He slipped the comb into the pocket of his waistcoat, patting it for assurance as he smiled gratefully back at Kili, who nodded and disappeared down the line to speak with another of his companions.

And if all of the dwarves looked askance at the hobbit when they stopped for the night and Bilbo went to work on his poor battered feet with a will, he knew that while they all might be scratching their heads at the strangeness of hobbits, not all of them judged him as harshly as he may have thought the day before.


	2. Chapter 2: A Little Different

**I feel I should also point out that these chapters will also come in varying lengths, haha. Especially when little rabbit trail scenes start writing themselves into existence while I'm trying to do something else.  
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**Remord**

_~ n., a touch of remorse; v., to remember with regret ~_

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Chapter 2: A Little Different

_"Gandalf! Not the wizard who…" - page eight_

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Belladonna Took's son had always been a little different, even as a young hobbit boy, when he sat at the feet of the wandering storyteller in a gray robe, asking to hear more about dragons and goblins and giants. Running across farm fields pretending to rescue princesses from evils that most hobbits stoutly denied the existence of, save in the tales of grand adventures that one or two unsettled families kept on their shelves. Begging to hear more about the lucky widows' sons who could riddle their way out of the tightest corners. Or clapping as the Old Took commanded his diamond studs to fasten and unfasten before his lingering audience of one while fireworks burst in the night sky above their heads.

Bilbo had always taken more after the Tookish side than anyone wanted, although he had seemed able to tightly clamp down on those impulses quite effectively over the years, so that when he was a grown hobbit, he was quite as steadfast and respectable as anyone on this side of the Water.

Hobbits nodded cordially as they passed him smoking on his doorstep and he waved back or invited them to share his tobacco if there was no hurry in their step as, indeed, there rarely was when passing Bag End.

Blood will tell, though, as they say, and the hobbits who had known Bilbo as a child could hardly be surprised when a whole troop of dwarves came ringing at his front door and he invited them all in to tea. They had hoped, of course, that Mr. Baggins would send them off by dinner time, saying that they had had enough of that sort of thing in the Shire for one day, thank you very much.

But the dwarves hadn't left until the following morning. And they next thing anyone knew, Bilbo was chasing after them without a word to anyone else.

No, the older hobbits said as they gathered to drink away the mysterious happenings of bigger folk and the resulting emptiness of Bag End, no, Bilbo Baggins had always been a bit strange.


	3. Chapter 3: Smoke

**Because this was what I was expecting to happen at the end of _Battle of the Five Armies_, to parallel to _Fellowship of the Ring_ if not the scenes they decided not to include in the beginning of _An Unexpected Journey_.**

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**Remord**

_~ n., a touch of remorse; v., to remember with regret ~_

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Chapter 3: Smoke

_"Bilbo stood still and watched— he loved smoke-rings— and then he blushed to think how proud he had been yesterday morning of the smoke-rings he had sent up the wind over The Hill." – page sixteen_

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Gandalf sat down heavily beside him, but Bilbo was too wrapped up in his own emotions to react to the new presence beside him. Grubby fingers wrapped tightly around his knees as he kept his eyes fixed firmly on his woolly feet and the cold, hard stone beneath them.

The Battle was over. He had come out of it alive. Most of the company had, in fact. They were lucky. But not... not all of them.

And the hobbit was trying hard not to think of Thorin's final words to him. Or the hole through Kili's chest. Or the way Fili's body lay broken nearly beyond recognition.

For once he began thinking about such things, he knew that he would not be able to stop the tears from welling up in his tired, aching heart. Even if he was far from the only one grieving and would not be allowed by the healers to do what little a hobbit could to clear the area, he still felt too small and useless already without weeping while others worked.

Blinking, Bilbo realized that there was an odd rasping noise making its way past the murky depths of his brain. Gandalf had produced a long stemmed pipe from somewhere and was now cleaning it out with a _scrape scrape scrape_.

The hobbit sat with rounded shoulders that eventually straightened as he turned toward the wizard. He had never known a pipe to be so thoroughly in need of a cleaning as this one seemed to be, but long fingers kept moving around the bowl, rounding it until every speck of debris had been cleaned out.

Bilbo watched as Gandalf then reached for a pouch hidden within the folds of his dirty grey robe and opened it up to reveal a store of tobacco that, he realized with a pang, came from the Shire. Gandalf took fingerful after fingerful of the dried leaves and stuffed them methodically into the bottom of his bowl, taking time to press it down with a crunch after each pass. When it had been prepared, he reached for a tinderbox from inside his cloak.

For a moment, Bilbo wondered why a wizard would need to use one when he could simply magic a small flame into being, but he was surprisingly comforted by the routine he knew so well after performing it himself a hundred times.

Something inside him melted a little as Gandalf lit his pipe and puffed until smoke began to wreath around them. Bilbo closed his eyes for a minute and when he opened them again, the world beyond their little shelf of stone had become hazy, shrouded in the aromatic mist. And, even while he curled forward to wrap his arms around himself in an effort to dispel the sense of uselessness, he couldn't find it in himself to be sorry for it. Not when it made him feel just a little bit less lost and unbalanced in such a wide world.

Gandalf's eyes slid over to the little hobbit sitting next to him and he hummed at what he saw. Bilbo didn't look up at the noise, but he did lift his head when Gandalf blew the second smoke ring past his nose.

His eyes fixed on the white circle as it floated past him. Then the next one, that hovered over his feet until it finally fell apart. He watched silently as the wizard continued puffing at his pipe and, when a double ring came next, he softly blew at it until it merged and expanded and turned green before vanishing.

He smiled, then.

And the wizard did too, as he gently blew enough to fill the sails of the ship he sent streaming away into the darkening sky above their heads.


End file.
